FINAL PAPER: CAUGHT RED-SANDED IN TAIJI, INITIAL DRAFT

"In the highly saturated media environment that we live, the present poses a myriad of modern and exceedingly public venues for enacting affective social activism. Never before have we lived in a more global moment in time, when information about events taking place on the other side of the world are available at the click a mouse on a computer or touchscreen button on a smartphone or tablet. Information travels rapidly, especially something like the extremely provoking and sensational story of the slaughter of innocent sea creatures supposedly every bit as cognizant and self-aware as any human being. Through the 2009 documentary film The Cove, as well as a social media campaign explosion, specifically on Twitter, the questionable dolphin fishing practices which take place for several months out of the year in the small fishing community of Taiji, Wakayama prefecture, Japan have been attacked. This problem however, is not so very cut and dry as it may seem; it seems that both sides are liable to bend the truth to better suit their aims, social media posts have the potential to (and often do) go viral without the proper citation of information to back up assertions, and what is truly “real” about the situation often gets lost in the crossfire. Nevertheless the public nature of these kinds of activism are vital to keeping an issue present in people’s minds and also push it towards some kind of resolution, regardless of who exactly might suffer from this paradigm shift.

The 2009 documentary film The Cove, directed by former National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos, stars Ric O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer and converted animal rights activist working to expose the controversial dolphin hunting practices in Taiji, Japan. Throughout the course of the film Ric explains how the entertainment industry has and continues to make millions fetishizing human and dolphin relations as being completely positive, even in captivity, and how the dolphin fishing industry in Japan is systematically wiping out thousands of these animals annually. Ric’s main assertion however is that dolphins are extremely smart, sentient beings like humans and have a much greater capacity to understand the dire situations they find themselves in than we may currently accept as possible. Though this may be true, O’Barry’s position is undeniably biased although understandable. As the film progresses, the viewer finds out that Ric actually worked to create this romanticized human-dolphin relationship in the 1960’s as the trainer who not only captured but worked with the 5 dolphins that interchangeably played the female bottle-nosed dolphin on the massively popular television show Flipper. However, the more he worked with these dolphins he began to understand they posses a much higher level of critical thinking, problem solving, and sentient thought than he previously believed was possible.

The real turning point for Ric O’Barry however came when one of his most beloved Flipper dolphins, Kathy, “committed suicide” in his arms. One day, Kathy simply swam into his arms, took a last breath, consciously forced suffocation by not taking another; she then sank to the bottom of the tank and died. Prior to the incident Ric said he could feel and see her depression living in captivity. Watching Ric relate this tale, it is hard not to become emotional. This kind of story in a documentary is meant to illicit a reaction, causing a deeply affective response by demonizing the practice of keeping these majestic living beings in captivity. Similarly, the way in which the Japanese fisherman are portrayed in the film is as almost animalistic and diabolical themselves, attempting to hide the horrendous atrocities they are committing. In The Cove, we do see the filmmakers and activists working alongside Barry getting harassed by local police and fisherman in Taiji, however these interactions often amount to little more than jeering and a removal of these intruders from the space they are trying to infiltrate. As a result, the team is forced to work under the cover of darkness, planting hidden aquatic and land recording devices systematically throughout the secluded killing grounds that is the cove."

This is where I am at this point in time in terms of writing my final paper. I have watched The Cove and am currently sifting through a slew of online articles and Twitter posts concerning the issue as it is unfolding presently. From here on, in my paper I would like to talk a bit more about what the team does in The Cove and expose some elements of the filmmaking that seem to make it less of a documentary and more of a modern, reality thriller. I also intend to address some of the wild allegations that Ric makes in the film about the people of Taiji and their practices, specifically if the hunt is truly a part of their tradition as they say or if the whole situation has gotten a bit out of hand. Finally, I will discuss how social media has also played an important role in this issue, with every kind of individual weighing in on the situation with their own, heavily biased opinions on the issue, often times influenced directly by the possibly wrong assumptions and viewpoints that The Cove engenders.

The following are some of the online resources I plan on utilizing in the rest of my paper:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/20/world/asia/japan-dolphin-hunt/index.html
https://twitter.com/CarolineKennedy/statuses/424405245217611776
https://twitter.com/UKAmbTim/statuses/425056733237878784
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/22/264742893/ambassador-kennedy-criticizes-japans-dolphin-hunt
https://twitter.com/search?q=tweet4taiji&src=typd
https://twitter.com/SeaShepherd/status/113476843461550080
https://twitter.com/rickygervais/statuses/424257527363424256
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/04/04/social-media-storm-descends-taiji-japanese-town-center-dolphin-slaughter-248055.html

COMMUNITY EVENT: LEGAL OBSERVER TRAINING AT MU

This past Friday (April 25^th) I attended a Legal Observer training session on the Marquette University campus in Cudahy Hall Room 137 headed by Emilio De Torre of the American Civil Liberties Union. According to Emilio’s presentation “Legal Observers are individuals, usually representatives of civilian human rights agencies, who attend public demonstrations, protests and other activities where there is a potential for conflict between the public or activists and the police, security guards or other law enforcement personnel. The purpose of legal observers is to monitor, record and report any unlawful or improper behavior by the police.” Basically, as a Legal Observer I will function as a witness coordinating with the ACLU of events at protests, demonstrations, strikes, counter-protests, and elections to monitor First Amendment Rights violations. I will observe and document varying events, as well as educate the public about their rights.

The ACLU expects their Legal Observer volunteers to remain impartial at protests and demonstrations in order to document the events as true to reality as possible. As representatives of the ACLU Legal Observers are not allowed to break any part of the law themselves, wether that be through inciting violence or riots with officers or even public urination. Drugs, alcohol, and weapons are to be left at home as well as one’s opinions on any issue. The most important thing is to record as much information as possible about the events that transpire the day of an event to provide a well documented description of it and serve as witnesses if necessary. It is also crucial to record information about the officers present and the situation itself (badge numbers, officer names and rank, license plates, types of vehicles, etc.). Smart phones are to be used to record events as they happen in real time, and Twitter updates can be a critical element in communicating a non-objective illustration of the situation.

Ideally, as a Legal Observer I will never be detained myself, however Emilio did relate that at times the passion and intensity of these situations can lead to trouble. The best thing to do is to know your own rights when dealing with police (which he clearly communicated in his class visit the other day) and stand your ground when berated by police (they do have the law on their side when it comes to bending the truth). The greatest thing I can offer is impartially on behalf of the people who have the potential to be physically and socially oppressed by unlawful treatment. Without someone to monitor those in power, these situations have the likelihood of becoming unjust, as the strong oppress the weak. As a protestor or activist knowledge is power, as well as an impartial Legal Observer who can help keep the opposition in check. I intend on attending the May Day March organized by the immigrant and workers rights organization Voces de la Frontera on behalf of the ACLU as a Legal Observer if at all possible on May first.

CHASING VERACITY

After watching Chasing Ice in class this week I can say without a doubt that Global Warming is real world problem and is something that we, the human race, needs to consider heavily if we are to continue to have a future on this planet. The film traces the landscape photography of James Balog (once a climate change skeptic) and his “Extreme Ice Survey” project; using time-lapse film Balog was able to trace the erosion of a number of the world’s glaciers, as they broke down and melted into the surrounding ocean waters. This added material has the potential to sink island nations and displace countless other peoples who live along coasts with rising sea levels and also makes the ocean water much more acidic as well. The environmental consequence of our exceedingly destructive human practices is something that needs to change, however it seems that the powers that be are entirely unwilling to alter their course or recognize the negative impact that they are having on our global environment. Through the film Chasing Ice Balog hopes to illustrate this point for these corporations and politicians who are essentially signing away the future of our natural environment.

By making the changes that are happening to our planet indelibly visible through photography, Balog and other environmental activists are hoping to convey the immediacy of the situation to the widest audience possible. The major problem with the whole Global Warming theory is that it is more of an economic and political issue than an ecological one, directly because it is theoretical and therefore unproven. Big oil and the companies behind the multitude of new fossil fuel refining technologies, as well as the politicians that support them, claim that Global Warming is a hoax; they understand it as a form of fear mongering to push the world towards renewable energies, definitely out of line with their agendas. However with the kind of information gathering and eventual proof that Chasing Ice presents, it is becoming increasingly difficult to simply dismiss the problem and the culprits behind it. Even in the more popular media that I experience on a daily basis, although usually through social media, outlets like National Public Radio and other new sources I follow are beginning to report much more consistently on the climate change problem, even if this information is often indirectly related to the issue.

Friday I read an article from NPR online entitled "Telltale Rainbow Sheens Show Thousands Of Spills Across the Gulf" by Bob Marshall, concerning the massive amounts of oil that is leaking into the Gulf from shoddy pipelines and spills of BP and various other big oil companies. It details how Jonathan Henderson of the Gulf Restoration Network is flying all over the Louisiana coast looking for these spills in an attempt to make the mammoth matter of climate change public knowledge and expose the economic atrocities these corporations are committing against our natural environment. Although this article does not directly relate to climate change, it illustrates how our current practices and the lack of restrictions on them are destroying the natural landscape we are exploiting. On NPR I also came across an article detailing how an "Ancient Landscape Is Found Under 2 Miles Of Ice In Greenland" by Bill Chappel published on the same day (4/19/14). These new findings not only fall in line with those of Balog in Chasing Ice but also concludes with a warning "that the ice sheet's survival of earlier periods of global warming doesn't necessarily mean it can survive the current warming trend in global temperatures... If we keep our current trajectory, the ice sheet will not survive. And once you clear it off, it's really hard to put it back on" (Chappel). We know the damage that we have and continue to cause to this planet. The problem right now is making people care enough to want to change things.

Follow these links to National Public Radio online to read or listen to the articles I mentioned in this post (for some reason I can't get hyperlinks to work so please copy and paste these links into your browser URL):

www.npr.org/2014/04/19/304707516/telltale-rainbow-sheens-show-thousands-of-spills-across-the-gulf?

www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/19/304914190/ancient-landscape-is-found-under-two-miles-of-ice-in-greenland?

FINAL PROPOSAL: KILLING FOR COMMERCE

For my final I would like to take an in depth look at the questionable dolphin fishing practices that happen several times throughout the year in Japan. I have very little knowledge on the topic, but understand that it is becoming a larger social issue presently due to exposure from contemporary media. The unique moment in history in which we find ourselves has the ability to spread information worldwide over an extremely short period of time, faster than has ever been possible, because of invention of the internet. For my final paper I plan on making an in depth analysis of the 2009 documentary film The Cove, which illustrates the issue (albeit from a decidedly biased point-of-view, which I will take into account when writing the paper), and how widespread dissemination of the film made the issue visible and urgent. Then I plan on exploring how social media, like Twitter, has also played a crucial role in giving the issue a similar kind of global and current, immediate visibility that would have never been possible before the present time. I want to be sure to present both sides of the issue, taking into account the tradition of the Japanese people but also the rights of these animals themselves; from what others have related to me (although not necessarily animal experts by any means), dolphins are some of the smartest animals on the planet and what happens to them in these fishing scenarios is essentially murder. I will also present my own viewpoint and position on the topic, to frame where my own biases may lie (mostly for the benefit of my reader).

COMMUNITY EVENT: UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON SPRING POWWOW

This past weekend I attended a traditional Native American Powwow in Madison, the University of Wisconsin Madison Spring Powwow. At the Powwow there were a number of different tribes represented from the Wisconsin area, both in terms of drummers and dancers. Throughout the space there were a number of vendors selling their traditional wares and behind the exhibition center, a large food tent with Native American cuisine. This was truly a celebration of Native American culture and a wonderful effort at keeping the spirit of their people alive in the present day. Below are some photos as well as a video of one of the dances from the event; pardon the shaky recording.

Here is a link to the event page as listed online, if you would like to attend an upcoming Powwow check out the calendar and plan to make the effort to go; it is a incredible experience:

http://calendar.powwows.com/events/university-of-wisconsin-madison-spring-powwow/#.UzoVBBNJ8fM.facebook

THE INTENTIONS OF WRENCHING

Reading Edward Abbey’s novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, throughout the course of the tale I definitely struggled with how to take the actions of this Gang of eco-saboteurs fighting against the faceless industrial powers they saw raping and pillaging the natural landscape they loved so very much. The characters that Abbey created who commit these acts (Doc, Bonnie, Smith, and most prominently Hayduke) considered the work that they were doing to be definitively righteous; in that they were righting the wrongs that humans have enacted against their natural habitat. It is interesting to note also however, that the characters that oppose them (Bishop Love and his cohorts) share the same self-righteous sentiments themselves. For these characters the greatest good is serving the corporations, and ultimately themselves, willfully ignorant of the negative repercussions their actions will have on the nature they are exploiting. It seems to me personally that both camp’s viewpoints however are far too totalitarian, as I believe Abbey was attempting to illustrate within the novel the extremes on both sides for ecological preservation as well as industrial and human expansion. It cannot be so one-sided as Abbey has presented these polar opposites in his tale.

By the end of the novel we also understand that this course of action cannot be sustained. Both sides falter, as one by one each member of the Gang surrenders to the fate of retribution and Bishop Love even falls to his own failing health and aspirations that may have been literally too much for him to handle. Also, although to the public it may have seemed that Hayduke was ultimately destroyed by his own cause (by being cut down by gunfire in the landscape he was fighting for), we know that in actuality he survived to fight another day. In this way Hayduke became an eco-martyr, willing to sacrifice his body to the extreme (his perceived death) for his Mother Earth, even if he wasn’t really willing to do so in reality. Obviously, the forces at play in this novel are larger than the lives of the actors; they surpass human terms in relation to scale and duration. The planet Earth and these large corporations respectively are an amalgamation of many interdependent and individual elements. Exploiting some element or taking a jab at one portion of the whole may not do much damage but this is definitive of the struggle; this is a battle for the future of both entities, whose very existence is poised in opposition to one another.

Personally, I do feel that the Monkey Wrench Gang did “work” that was justified because I do not agree with the way that humans as a whole have come to maliciously exploit not only our environment but also one another for monetary gain, snubbing the destructive consequences of their actions in the process. With all of the recent focus on climate change, exacerbated by new studies from NASA scientists claiming essentially that “End is Nigh,” it would seem that if we do not do something as a whole to change our current caustic practices our human race very well may be doomed for destruction. The Earth is a much larger entity than we are and we know it. In terms of its history, we only represent a blip on the radar and this is a very sobering thought. Therefore, obviously I believe, property destruction simply is not enough. These large corporate entities need to realize that the way they are doing business is not sustainable and only increasing our velocity toward the apparently impending doom that our environment has in store for use. Karma’s a bitch, but that’s just the way it is.